Chapter 4

Saturday Night at the Movies

Wyatt arrives exactly on time and I stay upstairs, hoping one of my parents will answer the door, so Wyatt will have to make awkward conversation while I keep him waiting. My plan is to stand at the top of the stairs and listen.

Dad lets Wyatt in and, sure enough, starts the interrogation. Where is Wyatt applying to college? What does he want to study? Is he thinking of playing a sport? I have to stop myself from running downstairs and hugging and kissing my dad for asking so many dorky questions and making Wyatt squirm. If it gets awkward enough, maybe he’ll leave me alone.

After about ten minutes of listening to my dad grill Wyatt about his plans for the future, I hear my mother enter the kitchen. She takes Wyatt’s box of microwave popcorn and begins popping it. Mom knows his Uncle Oliver because she’s a member of the Eastfield Historical Society and Mr. Finn’s the president. So she starts talking to Wyatt about the history of our house and the Blake family because we’ve lived here for so many generations. Wyatt’s probably bored to death, but he has to act polite and listen.

Finally, I make my belated entrance, looking dazzling in a pair of SpongeBob pajama pants and my dad’s old high school track sweatshirt. If my outfit for the evening could speak it would say, “Make this quick because I’m tired and want to go to bed.”

But Wyatt doesn’t seem to care about what I’m wearing. He looks happy and relieved to see me.

Mom hands me the bowl of buttery popcorn and I head down the stairs to the basement. Wyatt follows me, carrying two cans of orange soda and some napkins.

We sit down on the couch and in between bites of popcorn I explain some background information. “My brother Clement was away at school, which was good, because I wanted it to be my movie and it would’ve been too tempting to ask him for help.”

“What, exactly, was the assignment?”

“In English class we were reading Hawthorne and Melville and some other boring authors. And then in Mr. Finn’s class we were studying local history. So for the project we had to focus on New England culture, like literature and art and stuff. Suddenly I got this great idea. I decided we should make a movie about the ghost stories of the Hockomock Triangle.”

“I’ve heard all about the triangle from my uncle. Isn’t there an entrance to the Hockomock Swamp right near here?”

“Yes, just a few feet past our driveway. There are miles of swampland in back of our house, on the southwestern corner of the property.”

“According to my uncle, the Hockomock covers about sixteen thousand, nine hundred and fifty acres of wetlands.”

“It’s big.”

He laughs and then turns serious. “So which legends did you document in your film?”

“We narrowed it down to five ghost stories. First we shot some film at the Lizzie Borden Museum, in Fall River.”

“She was found innocent of those murders, right?”

“Yes, but I think if they had forensics and C.S.I.s back then, they could’ve proven she was guilty. Most people think she did it. No one else was ever accused of the crime.”

“Cool. Where else did you film?”

“We visited five main locations altogether; each of them was supposedly haunted. We got some pretty spooky footage at a few graveyards right here in Eastfield. Then of course, we went to the Wild Wood Psychiatric Hospital where we really got freaked out. Our goal was to see a ghost. We wanted to capture evidence of an authentic haunting on film.”

“And did you?”

“I’ll show you the movie so you can see for yourself. A lot of kids skipped out on their classes to sneak in and watch it. Everyone was talking about us. We generated a lot of hype—my fifteen minutes of fame.”

After about a minute of skimming through the titles of the DVDs on the shelves under the TV, I find my film and slide it into the DVD player. Wyatt gets up and turns off all the lights. Then settles into the coziest corner of the couch. I sit back down, as far away from him as possible.

“I haven’t watched this film since last year. It creeps me out too much. Sometimes I still have nightmares,” I confess.

The shimmer of the TV screen casts an eerie glow on Wyatt’s face. He raises his arm up along the back of the couch and gestures to me. “You can sit a little closer if you’re scared. I won’t let any big, bad ghosts get you.”

“Dream on, Silver.”

“Hey, you’re the one with the nightmares. I’m just trying to help.”

When he smiles his teeth flash white in the darkness.

“Thanks, but I’ll be okay. I don’t need anyone’s help.” The only thing that scares me more than the movie is sitting close to Wyatt.

I sneak a quick look at his profile. He looks dead serious even though he was joking around a second ago.

“For the first part of the movie, we decided on a slide show of pictures taken at the Lizzie Borden Museum in Fall River. We downloaded some photographs from the internet and used some pictures we took ourselves, for the other slides.” I point the remote and click “Play.” The images flash in quick succession to the raging beat of “Raining Blood” by Slayer. The heavy metal music matches the gruesome axe murderer’s tale.

Wyatt laughs out loud. “Awesome. Great music! I love it, Annabelle. You’re too hilarious.”

On the screen of our basement TV, the camera zooms in on my face and I begin to narrate. “In June of 1893, Lizzie Borden was tried for the brutal, bloody murders of her father and stepmother. She was found innocent. But was she really?

“Someone bludgeoned her father to death with the blunt edge of a hatchet, while he was napping on the couch one steamy afternoon in August of 1892. The murderer swung the axe with such force that they broke Andrew Borden’s skull and split his right eyeball in half. Then the unknown perpetrator hunted down Lizzie’s stepmother, who was changing the sheets in an upstairs bedroom. They chopped her up, too; right here in this house, on quiet, sunny Second Street, in Fall River, Massachusetts.”

The scene on the screen wobbles a little as Meg steps back and pans the camera around the room. I continue to narrate as she films.

“The museum is also a bed and breakfast-style inn. You can sleep in the second Mrs. Borden’s bedroom for a hundred and fifty dollars a night and in the morning enjoy an authentic 19th century-style hot breakfast just like the one Lizzie Borden’s parents ate on the day they were murdered.”

As Meg moves in a little closer with the video cam, Wyatt and I are treated to a slightly tilted view of me from the waist up.

“These rooms are haunted by the ghosts of the victims, because the violent killings were never avenged. The jury acquitted Lizzie and no one else was ever arrested or tried for the bloody crimes. Welcome to the room where her father died.”

I sweep my arm to the left and point. “Right over there on that scratchy old sofa.”

The large brown couch has lace doilies on the arms and back. I ask the camera lens, “It seems like we’re alone here in this room, but are we?”

I turn to Wyatt and explain, “The Lizzie Borden part was just a warm-up. Nothing scary even happened. When we visited the graveyards at night, it got a lot scarier.”